Once upon a time I made my living playing music in clubs, but after a while I realised that the likelihood was that I would never earn anything more than pocket money with this chosen career, so I made my hobby (IT) my day job, and my day job (DJ’ing) my hobby. The result is a confused view of reality half baked in the deeply technical world of threat and vulnerability vs a constant drive to create new and unique music through my instruments of choice – Needless to say, allot of crossover occurs, so occasionally I find myself pushing the limits of technology in my music, and getting very creative in my work!
I got my first set of decks aged 16, a cheap (well expensive at the time) set of “Disco2000” Belt Driven 1210 Replicas. They were actually quite good and held tempo well despite being driven by elastic!! A couple of months after i got my decks I started working as a glass collector in a local night club, not long after starting that job, I got chatting to the resident DJ and blagged myself the evening warm up slot which got me my first live gig! I was very much into Happy Hardcore, Techno and House at the time, so I was always in trouble with management for my choice of music, but more often than not the punters loved it!. Eventually, I got my own night, well I say my own night, it was a shared “alternative” night, largely frequented by Goth who came to bounce around to Nirvana! Despite this I would play a 2 hour slot of Hardcore and Techno and occasionally even had the Goth bouncing along with the few ravers who dared to brave the crowd! About a year later I got a full time residency at a local pub, 7pm through to midnight, unfortunately, it was playing typical club/pub music and not what I wanted to play. That said, it paid the bills and as a bonus I got a 1hr slot from 12-1am in the club that was part of the complex, where I could play house to a welcoming crowd. I considered this my career for a couple of years, but the reality set in that I was not likely to ever become “Pete Tong” so I decided to get a real job and put the decks back in the bedroom.
I have progressed beyond the good old days of vinyl, all be it with some resistance to be honest and now prefer the limitless potential of midi-control-surfaces combined with computer software and MP3. I transitioned straight from vinyl to MP3 through the use of technologies like Final Scratch when they first came out, but completely missed the whole CDJ movement in favour of a jump to midi. I ran with an M-Audio Xponent linked to TorQ for generic track-2-track mixing and an Akai APC 40 linked to Ableton Live for a period of time before eventually moving to a Native Instruments Traktor S5.
I still release mixes when I get the time so check out the Live Mixes section of this site or my podcast to see if there is anything that you like, its all free!
The following is a guide to the styles I mix:
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